Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire Page 21

  “Ingenuus,” he said with all the patience he could muster, “why do you think I gave that order?”

  “Because you don’t understand the situation, sir.”

  This was proving to be a most surprising conversation. “Enlighten me.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t.” At least the big man had the grace to blush.

  “Are you telling me,” said Ruso, “that there is a situation of which I’m not aware but everyone else—you, Gambax, Doctor Thessalus, for all I know everyone else in the Tenth Batavians—is?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir.”

  “And what if I were to order you to say?”

  Ingenuus swallowed. “Then you’d have to charge me with insubordination, sir.”

  “I see.” Ruso scratched the back of his ear with one finger. “This is all rather difficult, isn’t it?”

  Ingenuus’s blush deepened. “Sorry, sir. But Doctor Thessalus asked me—”

  “Of course he asked you! He’d ask anybody who walked through the door! That’s his problem!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “From now on, you are not to give him anything he asks for without consulting me first. Understand?”

  “But sir—”

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” mumbled Ingenuus, his head bowed in misery.

  Ruso leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and stared at the wall. He had never trusted Gambax. Now he could no longer trust Ingenuus. He was unlikely to get any sense out of Thessalus for a while and Metellus the aide was a self-confessed professional liar. Things had come to a fine pass when the only people he could rely upon were a clerk and a girl who was no friend of the army, and who believed she had meetings with gods in stable yards.

  43

  TILLA WAS BEGINNING to know what to expect. There were the shriekers, the starers, and the believers like Rianorix who whispered, “Have you come to haunt me, daughter of Lugh?” Ness was a starer. Then she launched herself across the doorstep and held Tilla close, crying, “You are home, you are home! I knew you were alive! Oh mistress, the goddess has brought you home at last!”

  “Ness!” gasped Tilla, hugging the bony creature who had been their family cook for years and had only been saved from the raid by being at a relative’s house nursing a broken ankle. “I thought I would never see you again!”

  “I am not that old, mistress,” pointed out Ness, recovering from her uncharacteristic outburst of affection. “Although your uncle and cousin are doing their best to work me to death.”

  “Are they here? I need to talk to my uncle. Rianorix was arrested.”

  “We know. Your uncle is out on business. Your cousin is in her room. I will tell her you are here.”

  Ordinary people grew thinner as the winter progressed, but the rich carried their weight through to the next harvest. So it was no surprise to see Aemilia plump and well fed. What was unusual was to see her pretty cousin confined to her bed with the sun still so far above the horizon, her wide blue eyes rimmed with red, and her fine clothes looking as though they had been slept in for several days.

  “Cousin! Are you ill?”

  “Daughter of Lugh!” Aemilia threw back the blanket, lurched to her feet, and flung her arms around Tilla. “Is it really you? Have the gods sent you to comfort me?”

  Tilla’s return of the embrace was wary. The cousin she remembered as fastidious smelled stale. Her hair was clumped and greasy. When her grip showed no sign of slackening, Tilla patted her on the shoulder and stepped back. “Veldicca tells me you have troubles.”

  “Everything has gone wrong!” Aemilia flung herself back onto the bed. “Where have you been? I have missed you terribly!”

  Tilla opened her mouth to answer, but Aemilia carried on. “Everything has gone wrong, cousin, and I am all alone with nobody to help. Nobody understands!”

  Tilla sat on the bed and eyed her cousin in the uneven light that entered the little room through the thick green window glass. “I am sorry to hear it.”

  “Such horrible things have been happening. You cannot imagine. Felix is—oh, I cannot say it—and Ness says Doctor Thessalus has gone mad and Rianorix is arrested and the builders have gone away and I am not with child after all and Daddy says I was a disgrace at the funeral but I couldn’t help it, I really couldn’t!”

  “Rianorix has been released,” said Tilla, grasping for an end in this tangled account.

  “Oh, thank the gods!” Aemilia ran her fingers through her hair, leaving pale tracks running back across her scalp. “Oh cousin, it was not my fault! I never meant anything to happen to him, truly! But nobody will believe me!”

  “You didn’t mean anything to happen to Rianorix?”

  “No, no—you don’t understand!”

  “You asked Rianorix to curse one of the soldiers, but you didn’t expect anything to happen to either of them?” asked Tilla.

  “No! When I thought I was with child I asked him to help me, but I didn’t mean he should . . . oh, why is he so stupid? This is all his fault, and everything is ruined!”

  Tilla had been right. Aemilia had not changed. She was not even interested in where her cousin had been for the last three years.

  “I must look terrible,” blurted Aemilia suddenly, groping beneath her pillow and producing a mirror. She peered into the polished bronze surface, gave it a vigorous rub against her sleeve, and peered again, tweaking her hair and muttering, “Oh, dear. Oh, dear . . .” She scrambled down to the end of the bed and began rummaging among a jumble of pots and vials and earrings and hairpins strewn across a small table. “If only your mam were here now! She would understand. She would know what to do.”

  Tilla closed her eyes and thought of the time Aemilia had refused to get off the swing, shouting, “Push me! Push me harder!” and then run crying to Mam, blaming everyone else, when she fell off. The time Aemilia had watched from a safe distance while the daughter of Lugh groveled about collecting eggs from the hens’ cobwebby hiding places, then offered to help carry them and run to the house shouting, “Look at all the eggs I found!” The time when, finally exasperated, the eight-year-old daughter of Lugh had grabbed the cousin with the silly Roman name by the hair and shoved her into the nettle patch. The daughter of Lugh had been given a beating and the cousin with the silly Roman name had been given sympathy, a drink of warm honeyed milk, and crushed nettle stems to treat her stings. Whatever Aemilia did, Mam excused her on the grounds that she was a poor motherless child. Now Mam was not here to excuse her, yet still Tilla felt guilty for being angry with her. She said, “Rianorix is released, but they are still asking questions about him.”

  Aemilia turned, makeup brush in her right hand, mirror in her left, revealing one painted eye and one naked one. “Did he tell them anything about me? They won’t come here, will they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It wasn’t my fault!”

  Tilla felt the muscles in her jaw tighten and took a deep breath. Getting angry with her cousin, she reminded herself, was like getting angry with a sheep for being stupid. It ruined your day and the sheep was too dim to care. “What Mam would say,” she announced, “is that you should get up and wash and change your clothes and have something to eat and you will feel much better.”

  Aemilia sniffed. “Do you think so?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how will that change anything?”

  “Give me your clothes. I will hand them out to Ness. Does this window open? It stinks in here.”

  Aemilia sniffed again and looked as though she was about to cry. “Don’t be angry with me, cousin. Please. I couldn’t bear it if you were angry with me.”

  “You should be angry with yourself for what has happened to Rianorix. Do you know what the soldiers do to people when they question them?”

  “You aren’t angry? Are you sure?”

  Tilla, unlatching the window, ignored her.

  “You are so kind, cousin. Just like your ma
m. She was always kind to me when nobody else was. Oh, I do miss your mam!”

  “So do I. Now give me your dirty clothes. And stop crying. The makeup will run and then you will have to clean it all off and start again.”

  Aemilia wriggled out of her tunic and began to release her heavy bosom from the creased and sweat-stained breastband. “Daddy and Ness are both angry with me,” she said.

  Tilla took the pile of crumpled clothing and opened the door. “I will fetch some water.”

  “Will it be warm?”

  “I will see what I can do.”

  “Tell Ness not to give my silk tunic to the washerwoman. I don’t want it lost!”

  “Warm water, and the silk tunic is not to be sent to the washerwoman,” repeated Tilla, wondering how she had become a servant again so quickly.

  “Oh, cousin,” cried Aemilia. “I am so happy to see you again!”

  44

  THESSALUS WAS LYING on the couch with his head propped on a cushion. His eyes opened as Ruso entered, but the rest of him did not move.

  “Doctor.” The voice was weak. Ruso noticed the dark hollows around his eyes.

  “How are you feeling??”

  Thessalus appeared to find this a difficult question. In the end he said, “Not good, I think. How are you?”

  “Very well, thank you,” said Ruso, and moved swiftly into, “I thought I’d drop in while I was passing,” before any fresh confusion arose over which of them was the doctor and which the patient.

  “I have news for you,” he said. “Rianorix has been released. You have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about.”

  “I am a murderer!”

  “You are troubled and confused. The medicine you have been taking to ease your mind has not helped.”

  Thessalus sighed. “My head is aching,” he said. “Do you happen to have any—”

  “Poppy tears?” suggested Ruso. “No.” He peered at the man, who really did not look well. He reached for his case. “I’ve some juice of dried roses boiled in wine.”

  Moments later he handed Thessalus a cup.

  “What is the thing that everybody knows except me, Thessalus?”

  “I am too tired for philosophical questions.”

  “I need to know about the emergency call that came in on the night Felix was killed.”

  Thessalus did not seem to be listening.

  “You came back from Susanna’s,” Ruso reminded him, “then you were supposed to be on duty at the infirmary but you were called to an emergency and went out again until dawn. Where did you go?”

  Thessalus steadied the cup with the other hand and took a gulp of the medicine. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t remember anything at all. It must be in one of the spaces.”

  Ruso said, “Spaces?”

  Ruso looked at the boldly patterned plaid cloth that Thessalus had fetched from a box in the corner and was now holding out, draped across both arms. He scratched one ear. “I’m afraid I don’t quite . . .”

  “The spaces in my memory,” said Thessalus, as if this would make perfect sense if Ruso could only make more effort to listen. “Look again.” His forearms, which he had held pressed together, moved apart. The cloth that had hung in a loop between them stretched out to form a soft horizontal surface “Now. Watch.” He drew his arms together again until they were touching from elbows to wrists, and adjusted their position so that the repeating pattern reformed perfectly across the two separate sections of cloth supported by his arms, leaving out the fold that hung between them. “You see? It looks the same, but what is missing?”

  “The cloth in between?” suggested Ruso.

  “Exactly!” said Thessalus. “And now?” He shifted one arm half an inch forward. The horizontal lines of the plaid shifted out of alignment. The join became obvious. What was not obvious—to Ruso, at least— was what this was supposed to illustrate about Thessalus’s memory.

  “This is how I find out,” said Thessalus sadly, looking down at the fractured pattern. “The spaces are invisible. When the lines join up, how can you tell?” He glanced at Ruso. “When you sleep, how do you know how long you have slept?”

  “By whether it’s daylight?” suggested Ruso. “By the sound of the next watch?” He wanted to add, “By whether Tilla is up and lighting the fire,” but Thessalus was already sufficiently confused.

  “By whether the pattern lines up,” said Thessalus. “Before, it is night . . .” he lifted his left arm, “and after, it is day.” The right arm rose. “So,” he said, moving his arms so the loop of cloth billowed between them, “you know there is something in between.”

  Ruso, who was beginning to grasp what he meant, said, “There are times when you can’t remember what you’ve been doing? When you’re awake?”

  “What happens in between . . .” Thessalus stretched the cloth out again, “I have to guess.”

  “How long has this been happening?”

  Thessalus shrugged. “When the patterns line up, who can tell?”

  “Everyone has patches where they lose concentration,” suggested Ruso. “Lots of people find if they’re traveling and thinking about something else they sometimes forget whole miles. They know they’ve arrived but they can’t really remember much about the journey.” At least, he hoped there were lots of people. Maybe he was the only one.

  “Not just minutes,” said Thessalus. “Sometimes hours. A whole day once. Gone. Stolen. Is someone stealing my hours?”

  “I think they’re being drowned in poppy tears. And if you’re only guessing at what fills the spaces, you may be guessing wrongly.”

  “I have dreams.”

  “Dreams seem very real at the time. But when you wake, you know they aren’t.”

  “And the healing that comes in dreams?”

  Ruso hesitated. He had never been sure about the trustworthiness of divine healing through messages in dreams, but he knew several people who claimed to owe their lives to it, and indeed he was hard-pressed to explain their cures in any other way. On the other hand, he could recall several cases where the gods had been given the credit but the doctor had done most of the work. “Healing is one thing,” he said. “Nightmares are different.” And this relative sanity was, he feared, a mere break in Thessalus’s mental clouds that might soon close. “Tell me,” he urged, seizing the moment, “what you remember about that night.”

  Thessalus looked sadly down at the cloth, then folded it neatly and set it beside him on the couch. “We came out of the bathhouse and went to Susanna’s,” he said. “It was Gambax’s birthday. There was an argument. Something about cows. A soldier was lying to a native. I remember thinking somebody should defend the native.” Thessalus paused. “Then I woke up here, after a ghastly dream, with blood on my hands and my clothes.” He looked apologetically at Ruso. “I looked at myself and I was not injured. I told myself I must have drunk more than I thought. That I had been to the infirmary on the way home and the blood was from a patient. Or that I had been to a temple that night and made a sacrifice.”

  “Tell me about the dream.”

  Thessalus bowed his head into his hands, raking back the hair with his fingers into a wild splay of dark curls. “I am holding a knife,” he said slowly. “Felix is afraid. He is pleading. Begging me not to do what I am going to do with the knife. I tell him to be silent but he won’t. He keeps saying he has no cows. I tell him he must pay, because I don’t want to do it. And he won’t be quiet. He tries to shout. I silence him with the knife.”

  “This is all a dream, Thessalus. Everything in it comes from somewhere else.”

  “The worst is yet to come,” muttered Thessalus. “I said nothing. I washed my hands and clothes and ate breakfast and went to the infirmary hoping to find a patient whom I had treated the night before. When I got there I heard Felix was dead. I was already leaving the army for fear of what I might do in one of the gaps. Now I saw that it was too late. I should have gone before. I knew the native would be blamed and I knew I had to do
something.”

  “This blood,” said Ruso. “Did anyone else see it?”

  “I saw it. I was awake.”

  “We both know what a strain it is to perform surgery,” said Ruso. “I can see why you’re convinced you’ve done something wicked but I think you’re confused. A lot of terrible memories have combined in your mind and given you a frightening dream that just happens to have some coincidental links to reality.”

  A weak smile crept across Thessalus’s face. “You would have me consult an interpreter of dreams,” he said. “A clever theory. Spoken like a Greek.”

  “Thank you,” said Ruso, privately thinking it was a lot more plausible than Plato’s nonsense about triangles. “I’m going to do my best to find out where you really did go that night, Thessalus. Then we can straighten all this out.”

  Thessalus brightened. “That will be good. Then perhaps you can tell me what I did with the head.”

  45

  RUSO HAD INTENDED to consult Metellus before making any further inquiries into the murder, but finding himself alone with Gambax he decided to carry on his fictitious inquiries into night duties. After surprising his deputy by congratulating him on the cleanup, he said, “You said when you came back from Susanna’s the other night, Thessalus was on duty but he was called out. I suppose in that situation you would cover for him?”

  “Nobody asked me, sir.”

  “I’m not complaining. In fact, I heard you were called out yourself.”

  Gambax looked puzzled. “No.”

  “I must have been misinformed. I was told you went out again just before curfew.”

  “Oh, that. Like I told Officer Metellus, I went out to find Felix. I was worried about him.”

  This was a surprise. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was a friend of yours.”

  “He wasn’t. I was supposed to be meeting him over at his quarters, but he wasn’t there. After that business at Susanna’s, I thought I ought to go out and see if he wanted company on the way back.”